ANAVETS North Vancouver

The Army, Navy & Air Force Veterans Association Senior Citizen’s Housing Society (ANAVETS) established partnerships to redevelop their existing seniors housing site in North Vancouver to provide 76 affordable apartments for low-income seniors combined with future market housing.

Why redevelop?
ANAVETS owned three buildings in North Vancouver that provided affordable rental homes for low-income seniors. Built in the 1960s, the buildings had become run down. In 2010, one of the buildings was demolished and the other two buildings with 58 rental units were in desperate need of major repairs and did not have basic life safety systems, such as sprinklers.

Partnerships
A developer, Intracorp, approached the Society with a plan to build a LEED silver standard building with 76 rental units – John Yeoman’s Place – on the site of the building that was demolished in 2010. In exchange, the Society provided Intracorp with the land that had the two old buildings.

BC Housing provided the Society with $12.8 million in construction financing through the Community Partnership Initiative, as well as guidance around tenants’ long-term needs, best practices in construction products and managing their partnership with the developer.

The residents
Residents of the two existing buildings were able to move into brand new, modern apartments that provide more safe and secure housing than what they had before. Intracorp will demolish the older buildings to make way for a new market condominium development.

Result
The new affordable seniors development was built to LEED Silver standards and includes 22 studio and 54 one-bedroom apartments. In addition to large suites, it includes three fully-wheelchair accessible suites.